The Good & Perfect Giver

If you have ever been burned in a situation you know the feeling of being, as they say, gun-shy. Once it's happened in a big way, it's easier to recognize an arguably justifiable hesitancy in other areas or seasons of life. I have had it happen in my expectations. One particular instance became a mark on my life, even if only to myself.

See, I had a grand plan and expectations from the bottom of my heart to the top: to go to Paris. It might seem frivolous, but it was a life dream of mine and as Audrey Hepburn famously said, "Paris is always a good idea." She wouldn't lie, not with those big glistening eyes! I set my heart right on my own plans that I crafted. I even did all steps to get myself there, save for one thing on which I hesitated...buying my plane ticket.

I had just begun attending my church, and returning to a life immersed in a community of believers after a year and a half of solitary faith. In hindsight, of course, it is so clear to me now - knowing all that I have learned in the just over five years I've spent at Mercy Vineyard - that I didn't even think to really see if I was supposed to go. Thankfully, God steered me in my conscience, and I could not manage to buy that plane ticket. The date edged closer, and though I constantly talked as if I was going, I never bought it. At a point of no particular consequence or significance in my memory, I came to the conclusion it would be irresponsible for me to go, and quite frankly a terrible decision. And again, in retrospect, I was trying to force something that just wasn't.

I didn't really express the disappointment I felt to anyone. In August, shortly following my decision to stay stateside, I went to a Vineyard conference in Duluth with some friends. Again, though insignificant in memory, something in the teaching or singing prompted me to go up to the front to get prayer (in my early months of Mercy every call to receive prayer was for me; I lived up front of the church getting prayer!) Despite what I asked for prayer for being completely unrelated, the woman who prayed for me, Amy (the older sister of my now best friend) having never met me or knowing anything of my life, she spoke right to the part of my heart that broke for my crushed dream. Even her words are lost in my memory, but the sentiment is absolutely not. I was rocked that a perfect stranger not only knew exactly what was on my heart, but took the risk to speak to it what she heard God saying.

Part of it was, God knows the huge disappointment on your heart, but He wants you to know He has something even greater in store. I didn't know the full weight of what that would look like, but in that instant the big dream broken into pieces and the unknown of the immediate future were peripheral. God just spoke to my heart, what I really needed to hear. And He wasn't lying.

To this day, I will say Paris was the best thing I've done in my life. It was far beyond what I could have imagined...just like God had told me through Amy. That time was not only a huge blessing for all it encompassed, but a great lesson in patience, trust, discernment, and wisdom. For me, it is one of the things in my life that exemplifies a characteristic of God that I firmly believe in: He is a good and perfect giver. Often, the reality of having been given such a great gift hits me, and it makes me cry. It's already come and gone, and I still can't believe it was given to me. My heart bobs at the thought; both sad that it's gone, and joyful that it was mine.

Now, when faced circumstances that go against the grain of my wants - though I may have to remind myself - this is the lens I view it through. I find peace in knowing that, whatever comes, He doesn't disappoint, rather He surpasses, and is lavish.

"As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways...declares the LORD." Isaiah 55:9

Re: Dateless

I find it laughable that such an absurd, circular, and slightly nonsensical post such as this ("Dateless") gained so much traffic...and a little sad. See, I've written so much more! I write so many more important things (or so I think). Should I assume that all of my readers (and facebook friends) are highly invested in my romantic status? Do me a favor, go pick another title and read it til the end! Read a freaking poem or two! (Here's a favorite) Have a laugh, take on a challenge...read this weird monologue-y thing.

Well, for whatever reason that is now my most popular post in all the seven plus year history of my blog! Thanks for reading and...I'll keep you updated?

For now, enjoy:
Click here for an awesome song!

Dateless

I am in this really strange limbo in regards to my feelings toward being single. (I tend to stray from writing about it for fear of coming off as pathetic.) The older I get, the more I learn to like it; the more I'm happy that I'm figuring myself out, by myself and I don't need the "help" of a significant other to do that. The more I go through infatuations, the more my taste is refined. There are ebbs and flows, from the moping due to lack of a movie-watching cuddle-buddy, to decidedly deciding that I don't care if I ever "meet somebody"!

Lately it's been: "I just really want to go on a date." It's a boredom stage more than anything, because you see it's not quite so simple as some silly part of me makes it out to be. I don't really want to date.

A friend of mine suggested OkCupid. "You should just go on some dates," she said. Let me tell you, that place is disheartening! That's not to slam people for using it, by any means, it just didn't exactly encourage me in my half-hearted search in any way. It made me scared that having standards of any kind, never mind factoring in interest or attraction, is an impossible feat. Anyway, I don't think e-dating is for me, evaluating the chemistry is too important an initial factor.

Thankfully I am, what I like to call, Happily Picky. While I would love to just go on some dates, I have this nagging pragmatic side that knows it'd be a waste of time. I do not actually have interest in dating random people, for the heck of it. Don't get me wrong, I love meeting people, getting to know them, that's all well and good, but slap the label of a date on it and it changes everything. I'm not afraid to talk to men, in fact I'm an excellent flirt, when it doesn't count. But when I'm interested, nearly all self-confidence tries to leave...usually via the shakes. This had me thinking maybe I could try some dates in an effort to challenge myself, but it'd still be unfair because I know myself well enough to know when it's just not happening. And when it is, I'm nervous as hell.

Whenever anyone inquires as to "what you're looking for", they always seem to follow it with some solid criticism that, "If you don't want to be single you..." might have lower those standards. Forever. Lower my standards forever, or be single forever. (I can already smell the kick-backs of, "Well, not your standards, just some things..." Even then.)

But then, the question really is: do I not want to be single, though? No, I'm okay...but I could go on a date.

Off the Handle

I love you but
I can't always hover
wondering if
you'll fly off the handle
knowing that what I've learned
doesn't even hold a candle
to the way it makes me feel
and makes my heart reel
as the fighter in me rises
and the two struggle to find compromises
so when it settles
I try my best to let it be
I try my best to leave
Only then to fight back tears,
which I've turned into anger over the years
Because it's never been fair
I only just learned to be okay there
Don't bother to understand
Don't dare to try
Because the spare second you can spare
Doesn't show me that you care
That you make me cry
Until the need to be validated and justified
At the expense of others has died
Don't find it a surprise
That I can't always look you in the eyes.

A Closed, Bleeding Heart

I take breaks from really talking to God, from time to time. They're not intentional, or not completely I guess. I had this revelation of sorts, recently, that I sometimes do not address the things on my heart with God, as a coping mechanism to protect myself from feeling. I am an individual with a lot of feelings, and subtly or otherwise, people who don't feel all the feels (as the kids say these days) have treated me like some basket case. It has taken me a lot of time and conscious self-assurance to undo those lies, partially in realizing that to willingly face vulnerability is a strength. Even still, I backslide from time to time, and there are areas where I have taught myself to close off, in the name of self-preservation.

My grandpa was admitted to the hospital on Monday for a small stroke. Being my only living grandpa (married to my only living grandma), I've never experienced anything like this with a close relative. I found myself a little shaken to know that he felt confused and simply "lost" some things from his memory bank, like how to tie his shoes, or my mother's name. Startling, is the best-suited word I've found; it's startling. I continued my workday after the call, because otherwise I probably would've cried at work and felt embarrassed to have feelings. If I'm being really honest, that's what it was.

I waited at my parents' house for my mom to come home that night, I was worried she'd be upset. I discovered where I get my "in-charge" mode from. She said it's not that she doesn't have emotions about it, but things have to get done, too. I was upset, and of course saved it all for the person I trust most. No one has ever seen me a bigger mess than my mother, partially just because she's my mom, and partially because she would never even think to judge me for being too emotional. (Reference here: My Mother the Saint) She let me wrap my arms around her and cry. After she somehow graciously inquired as to my turbulence, I took a deep breath mixed with a sigh and said, "Being empathetic sucks," as we had a laugh. Then she said, "It's great," in that affirming way you'd hope a mother would, but of course mine really, extra means it.

Somewhere along the line, I adopted the idea that emotions are weak. In between trying to find a balance of vulnerability, I bought into crying being embarrassing. Further than that, I started not bringing those feelings to God. It's almost like I decided that if I ignore the way I was made, stuff all those nasty little buggers down into my stomach in the form of knots and up into my head as aches, the things that I feel won't feel. A twisted, self-designed, unconscious but fear-based coping mechanism to being empathetic.

Being empathetic does suck, and it is great. Sometimes when I think about it, I'm convinced it's a form of torture. I've been known to cry as much or more than someone who's actually going through the thing I'm hearing about. And I absolutely can't help it, because I just feel it, deeply. At some point, it became worth it to me to begin ignoring that in me and quit caring - and that sucks!

Thankfully when you're prone to feeling lots of things about lots of things, you can't just turn it off. I say "thankfully" because I know that's how I was designed.

Somewhat consciously, I've also been avoiding taking the hard things back to God in fear that I will only revel in what I feel and not see any change. It's like God has made me able to feel all the difficult things, to the extent that they might as well be happening to me, and then nothing. And it's scary; risky, rather, to put one's heart on the line with God. I know better than to give Him the silent treatment, because all along He quietly beckons as a listening ear and place of comfort. So what have I been waiting for?

It's easy to avoid God, but it doesn't make things any easier. A lesson I think I'm learning. If the Creator of the universe and He who authored selfless Grace and bestowed Mercy, is waiting to hear my heart, how could I keep it?

Say Things Well

It is a personal conviction and aspiration of mine to say things well. There is a way to say something well, or maybe only inherently to me it seems there is, so it's important to try to find it. Not so much in everyday speech, because so often I have no filter between the conception of a thought and its verbal birth, but in ideation, contemplation, and writing, there is a way to make a point and simultaneously, effortlessly make prosaic music.

Lately, I have felt nearly incapable of articulating the way that I want to. As a writer and someone who's generally passionate about communicating effectively, it's been frustrating. At times, embarrassing, that what I said does not even remotely equate to what I wanted to convey. Kind of like writer's block, but maybe more aptly named 'communicator's fog'. It's something no one else would notice or hold against me, except I to myself.

A veritable graveyard of thoughts once thriving and full of potential, my drafted posts list is racking up the longest string of weakly formulated paragraphs in a quite a while. Sadly, most of them will go unfinished, because the thought has landed there only to wither and die. And it's a sort of vicious cycle as there's something in writing that feeds back to me. Maybe it's exactly that: having not taken enough time to write, my articulation muscles are out of shape and practice. Cheers to easing back in...

My Mother, the Saint

When I say "My mom is a saint", if you know me (or her) well at all, you know that I'm not merely spouting flattery; I honestly believe it. Her and I are so vastly different in personality - with similarities here and there, of course - yet we've hardly ever really fought. I'd say a grand total of five good, all-out fights in my life. It wasn't until one of those few recently that I realized she wasn't perfect; twenty-three years in. Even then, I don't know if I believe it.

Sure, some things here or there, such as forgetting to pick us up from school occasionally, should have clued me in, but she's just about the sweetest thing alive and so how could you stay mad at her? I hardly ever lasted the ten minute car ride home.

Year after year she hosts extravagant holiday meals, and she doesn't even like putting on parties! Furthermore, she's an introvert. Somehow, she puts in the hours of preparation, provides a delicious meal even catering to various dietary needs or preferences of guests, and graciously sticks out the entire party, inevitably well-into the night. All so graciously done. And while there may have been a time or two (or more) she's confided in me the desire of a more evident 'thanks', or someone else in our rather large extended family taking a turn, the next year she'll be at it again. Up until 3:00 am the night before thanksgiving, making her famously good pumpkin pies - with a dairy-free one for Grandpa.

She can't help but buy little presents that she sees fit for anyone. She not only eats up the very presence of her two grand sons, but nearly adopts the children of her nieces and nephews. When explaining that I'm one of a now rarely sighted family of six, I usually note my mother's love for babies. I'll never forget, before she had grandchildren the way her face lit up as she gazed on a couple's baby who they brought over to our house. She patiently sat on the couch next to the mother, smiling and admiring the baby's every action. Eventually, after I commented on her exuberance, the mother asked if my own wanted to hold her daughter. I'll never forget the look of pure joy on her face as she happily cuddled and swayed the little one.

My mother was made to be a mom, no doubt about it. She cannot seem to help herself. Many of her selfless mothering actions I would say ask too much, to the point of absurd, but she insists! For instance, nearly every time I visit my parents' house, if there's an opportunity she makes me sit on her lap. I, a grown woman, and her, an aging one, yet she insists. While my brother and his wife stay with them, my mom has taken on his lunch while she makes my dad's. One of few times in my life I was at a literal loss for words was watching her cut up the blueberries for his yogurt because "that's how he likes them."

She's a saint.

Most people have their moments of glaring humanity and imperfection, but we learn to love them in spite of it. My mom is one of those rare types that you tend to wonder where the heck she came from and how come they don't make more like this! The countless hours of her life she has spent just listening to, consoling, and sitting with myself, my siblings, her siblings - let alone my dad! Whenever I finish a bender of a thought-purge and profusely apologize, she replies matter-of-factly, "I don't mind." She carries an incredible amount of patience and grace that seems scarce in this world.

These and at least a hundred other reasons I love that woman, and can confidently say would not be so much of who I am without the example and support she's been for me in my life. I'm wildly blessed to have such a fantastic mother, who is so pleasant to be with and who does so well at putting others before herself in love. If anyone is really responsible for teaching me anything about selflessness in love, it is attributed to her.

To my dear mother, one of the best friends a girl could have, with every last ounce of my heart: Happy Mother's Day.

[...yes, early]